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Feb 3, 2009

Movie Star

When I was around seven years old, my cousin Doug offered me a starring role in a high school film project of his. My younger sister was the female lead. The movie is titled "Escape" and is just one of many of Doug's displays of creativity over the years. I don't even know how many times I've seen this film, but it always makes me smile. And the thing I remember most about the whole experience? How INCREDIBLY difficult and frustrating it is to make a movie with a snot nosed five and seven year old brother-sister duo that haven't a single notion of what acting is. (Doug, your patience must have been incredible.)

Anyway, here's the film. Unfortunately I couldn't locate the soundtrack. Must have been lost in some tragic studio fire or something. As you can see in the film, my children's large heads were clearly inherited from me.

Until you gave me a copy at Xmas, I hadn't seen this for almost 25 years. It makes me chortle with its surreal vibe. (I was very into the Dadaists and experimental film back then.)

The genesis of this movie is that each film student was handed a two- or three-page script and we were told to do our interpretation of it.

My natural anti-authoritarian self rebelled against that, especially since it's kind of a dumb script and I wanted to do my own things. (I was also a teenager at the time, which just compounds the attitude problem.)

So to subvert the whole thing, I decided to cast against the story's overwrought darkness (the word "emo" didn't exist back then, but it was oh-so-emo) and use little kids. Fortunately James and Amanda were good sports about it, and it made babysitting a little more interesting. (I believe I got paid $5 to watch you guys for the afternoon, which bought the roll of film.)

It was easy to elicit crankiness from Amanda at the end of the day, because she was tired of the whole thing. I kept her interest by promising her "crummies," aka cookies. (Amanda used to have a different word for everything when she was a kid. Knives, for instance, were called "sharps.")

I have more stories about this shoot, but to spare the reputations of James and Amanda, I will refrain. If I ever need a loan, though, you guys better cough up, because I gots the goods.

I particularly like seeing the late great Moustache the cat at the end of it.